Lunar Colony

by Patrick Kinney

  As Glen inserted the end of the wire into an empty port, the machine came to life. Its large eyes became illuminated and its head rotated wildly in every direction.

  “No, COMMANDER SALERNO!” said the frantic robot. “THIS IS AGAINST PROTOCOL!”

  “Hey there,” said Glen, surprised by the robot’s sudden movements. “Just settle down. I’m not Commander Salerno, but I need to know where she is.”

  The robot looked at Glen and seemed to come back to reality, like someone who’d just woken up from a bad dream.

  “PLEASE FORGIVE ME, SIR. I AM A LUNAR FACILITY HELPER ROBOT, BUT THE ASTRONAUTS HAVE ALWAYS JUST CALLED ME NAT. APPARENTLY, I BRING TO MIND AN INSECT CREATURE YOU HAVE ON EARTH, THOUGH I AM AFRAID I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE CONNECTION.”

  “Nice to meet you, Nat,” Glen said, feeling a little funny. He’d never talked to a robot before. “What can you tell me about Salerno?”

  Nat’s eyes dimmed a bit, making him look sad. “MY DUTY IS TO ENSURE THAT ORDERS ARE CARRIED OUT. WHEN COMMANDER SALERNO REALIZED THAT I WOULD NOT PERMIT HER TO LEAVE THIS FACILITY, SHE DISCONNECTED MY WIRING. IF SHE ESCAPED, THEN I FAILED TO DO MY DUTY.”

  Glen felt sorry for Nat but needed to know more. “What could you have done to keep her from leaving?” he asked.

  “MY PROGRAMMING ALLOWS ME TO SHUT DOWN THE BASE, KEEPING ANYONE FROM OPENING THE DOORS. BUT I FAILED TO DO IT, AND NOW I AM JUST A FAILURE.” Nat dropped his head, saying, “BOO-HOO-HOO.”

  “Wait a minute, Nat. If you can lock the doors, does that mean you can open them, too?” Glen asked.

  “YES, OF COURSE,” Nat replied, perking up his head.

  “In that case, you still have a chance to help! I need an override on the vehicle-bay door right away,” Glen said, running back to the rover. “I’m going out to find Salerno!”

  “YES, SIR,” said Nat. His eyes had brightened again, and he punched numbers into a keypad on his wrist, causing the bay door to instantly open.

  “Thanks,” said Glen, who turned on the rover’s ignition. But before he could step on the pedal, the robot zoomed over to him.

  “COMMANDER SALERNO’S SUIT EMITS A TRACKING SIGNAL. UNFORTUNATELY, YOU WILL NEED A LOCATOR DEVICE TO TRACK THAT SIGNAL, AND I SAW HER TAKE IT BEFORE SHE DEACTIVATED ME.”

  “Then how will I find her?” Glen asked. “The moon is a pretty big place!”

  “AFFIRMATIVE. BUT BECAUSE THE LOCATOR DEVICE IS QUITE BULKY, SHE MAY HAVE CHOSEN TO HIDE IT RATHER THAN CARRY IT WITH HER. IF YOU CAN FIND THE LOCATOR DEVICE, IT SHOULD LEAD YOU TO HER. I WOULD HELP YOU, BUT I AM UNABLE TO LEAVE THIS FACILITY.”

  “Got it! Thanks, Nat.”

  Glen stepped on the accelerator and drove out of the vehicle bay. Before him stretched the lonely lunar surface, and somewhere out there, he hoped, was Commander Salerno.

  Mr. Johns

  Slayton was on the phone when Mr. Johns stepped into the flight director’s office.

  “Yes, yes, Director McNabb,” said Slayton, speaking into the mouthpiece, “everything is on schedule. We’ll have Salerno back on the ground in no time.”

  As Slayton spoke, he motioned for Mr. Johns to sit in one of the chairs facing the desk, which Glen’s father did with an air of exhaustion.

  “Right,” Slayton continued, “I assure you the kid will get the job done. I’ll keep you posted. Good-bye.”

  As he hung up the phone, he looked at Mr. Johns, whose face was filled with concern. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  Mr. Johns was done wasting time. “I want you to bring my son home, Mr. Slayton.”

  “You know we’re doing everything we can to make that happen,” Slayton replied. “And just as soon as he finds Salerno—”

  “Now, Mr. Slayton,” said Mr. Johns. “I want my son home now. I’m sure finding this Salerno character is very important to you, but what’s important to me is getting my son home safely. I want you to call off the mission and get him home. Now.”

  Slayton sat back in his chair and looked at Glen’s father. Though he had no children of his own, the flight director could understand the fear that lined the man’s face. Nonetheless, he was under orders and had a mission to complete.

  “Mr. Johns,” Slayton began, “I promise you that we’re going to do all we can to get your boy home safely, but abandoning the mission and leaving Salerno up there just isn’t an option. It’s not an ideal situation, I know, but right now, your boy is our best hope for rescuing that astronaut.”

  “Rescuing her?” Mr. Johns asked, frustrated. “It seems to me that she doesn’t want to be rescued. So, how can you put the safety of my son at risk?”

  “Again, Mr. Johns,” Slayton said, “we’re going to get him home just as soon as we can. But with all the media attention, it wouldn’t benefit anyone to bring him back before the mission is complete.”

  “Media attention?” Mr. Johns asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Haven’t you seen the news?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Slayton, I’ve been a little too busy worrying about my son to watch television.”

  “Well, let me show you,” Slayton said. He picked up a remote control from his desk and turned on a panel of televisions that covered his wall. Each was tuned to a different live news channel, where the top story was “Boy Astronaut Travels to the Moon.”

  As Mr. Johns stared in astonishment at the screens, Slayton said, “Glen has gotten us the kind of media attention we haven’t had in years. Suddenly, everyone is interested in the space program again. I mean, who knows? Maybe your kid is just what we needed to regenerate public interest.”

  “Mr. Slayton,” Glen’s father said, turning back to the flight director, “are you using my son just to save the space program?”

  “No, of course not,” replied Slayton. “No one planned this, and getting Salerno back is of the utmost importance. Still, you have to agree that this could be a very good thing for all who wish to see the space program continue.”

  “Mr. Slayton, I am a space enthusiast. I’ve always believed that discovery is one of the most important parts of life. But nothing is more important than my son, not even the space program.”

  “Mr. Johns, a lot of jobs are at stake here. A successful mission with lots of public interest could be just the thing to save them.”

  Slayton’s phone began ringing, and he could see that it was McNabb. “I’ve got to take this call. Don’t worry, Mr. Johns, we’ll get your boy home.”

  As he answered the phone, Mr. Johns got up to leave, but he stopped as he reached the door and turned back to the flight director.

  “Mr. Slayton?” Mr. Johns said.

  “Yes, what is it?” Slayton said, covering the mouthpiece with his hand.

  “I told you that the spirit of discovery is why I’m fascinated by space exploration. What about you, I wonder. Are you here to save my son and your missing astronaut, or are you just trying to save your job?”

  With that, Mr. Johns walked out of the office, leaving Slayton to stare at the empty doorway and ponder the question.

  Lunar Surface

  The hidden locator device, the mystery of Number Four, Salerno. Glen didn’t even know how to begin solving all of these problems, but as he raced the rover across the lunar surface, he was, at least for a while, not thinking about his troubles.

  “Wheee!” he shouted. The rover zigged and zagged across the moon, leaving tire tracks behind in the dust. The rim of a small crater appeared straight ahead, and Glen pressed the pedal to the floor. The vehicle jumped forward, heading straight for the crater. As it zoomed up the slope, Glen held on tight to the steering wheel.

  Vwooooom!

  The rover was airborne, flying high above the crater. Glen let out a whoop as he looked down at the ground below. The moon’s reduced gravity allowed the vehicle to glide perfectly to the crater’s far slope, where its four tires landed softly. Glen rolled down the slope, where he skidded to a stop.

  “That was awesome!” he said, catching
his breath. Then, as he wheeled the rover around to jump the crater again, he saw a shape in the distance, something rising from the ground. Curious, Glen set off to investigate.

  As he neared the object, he saw what it was: a tall, pencil-like structure sticking out of the moon’s surface.

  “It’s an obelisk,” Glen said aloud. “We learned about these in school.” He was right; it was an obelisk, a four-sided structure with a pointed top. “But what’s it doing here on the moon?” Glen wondered.

  He drove the rover right up to the structure and got out to have a closer look. What he saw surprised him. The stone obelisk was covered in strange carvings, pictures, and letters that Glen didn’t recognize. He walked around to each side, trying to make sense of his discovery.

  “This is weird,” he said. “What does all this mean, and who put this thing here? It doesn’t look like something man-made.” Glen was filled with wonder. He’d never seen anything like it before. Or had he?

  “Wait a minute,” he said, pulling out Salerno’s notebook. He flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for: a drawing of this very object. “I knew I’d seen this before!” he said. “According to Salerno’s notes, she calls this Number Two. And here are drawings of Numbers One and Three, which I’m guessing are somewhere else on the moon’s surface.”

  Glen flipped to another page of the notebook, where he found a map of the moon. Salerno’s penmanship was hard to read—Glen figured that you must not need good handwriting to become an astronaut—but he saw that there were three numbers spread out on the map.

  “Hmm, each of these numbers must represent an obelisk. So, Salerno must think there’s a fourth one somewhere out there—Number Four! But that still doesn’t explain what they are or where they came from.”

  He looked back up at the strange structure in front of him and gazed at it for several minutes, fascinated. It was hard for him to leave it without first understanding what it could be, but he knew that he needed to get moving. Looking back at Salerno’s map, he saw that she’d marked the location of each lunar facility. Not far from Number Two was the medical facility.

  I’d better check there, he thought. With any luck, I’ll find the locator device. Or better yet, Salerno herself.

  Medical Facility

  Glen passed through the medical facility, which was where the astronauts came when they were sick or injured. Ever since he had his tonsils removed when he was six, he’d hated hospitals. And now, as he passed by examination rooms full of medical equipment used to poke and prod, he realized that hospitals on the moon were just as bad.

  Man, this place gives me the creeps, Glen thought. I wanna get out of here. He considered just giving up and searching somewhere else, but he knew he couldn’t do that, not if he hoped to ever make it home. So, Glen took a deep breath and continued his search.

  He was passing by a door marked RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTATION, when he noticed a beeping noise coming from within the room. He slowly opened the door and peered inside. The beeping was definitely coming from somewhere nearby, but Glen’s attention was drawn to something else. There, in front of a large mirror, was a contraption made of two discs situated on top of a base.

  “Cool,” Glen said, “it’s a gyroscope trainer. Astronauts strap themselves inside of these things to learn how to tolerate space travel.” Glen knew that his body had already been through a lot for one day, but he couldn’t resist trying it out. He strapped himself in and pressed the ON button. Immediately, the gyroscope started spinning every which way.

  The world around Glen was a blur, but as he spun, he saw something that shocked him. For only a split second, it looked like he could see through the large mirror, and there, in a room on the other side, was a woman!

  Glen didn’t know if the gyroscope was distorting his vision, but he frantically reached for the OFF button, until, at last, the spinning stopped.

  He came to a halt and, after unstrapping himself, jumped down. Unfortunately for Glen, his body wasn’t done spinning, and his rubbery legs gave way beneath him. Crawling across the floor, he looked up and saw that the room was whirling above him. But the mirror looked normal.

  Still a little dizzy, he managed to pull himself to his feet and put his face to the glass. Again, nothing seemed strange. It was just a mirror, not a window into a room. And he certainly didn’t see a woman.

  “Hello?” he said, tapping on the mirror. “Is someone there?” No one answered, but he did hear something else. The beeping noise was definitely coming from the other side of the glass.

  Leaving the Research and Experimentation room, Glen turned left down the hall, where almost immediately he found another door, this one marked RESEARCH OBSERVATION.

  Entering, he saw several chairs facing a large window that looked out upon the gyroscope in the room he’d just left. Glen was so astonished that he barely noticed that the beeping was now very loud.

  “Oh my gosh,” he said. “It’s a two-way mirror! The researchers must use this room to observe the experiments without being seen.” Then, overcome with an eerie feeling, he said, “There really was a woman here a minute ago. And that could only be one person!”

  Glen popped his head out into the hall and looked up and down the corridor. He knew, though, that Salerno must be long gone by now. He sat down in one of the chairs in the observation room and shook his head in disbelief over how close he’d been to her.

  “Shoot!” he said, once again feeling frustrated. “If only I’d come into this room first, I would have caught her. Right now I could be bringing her back home.”

  Glen was upset by his bad luck, but the longer he sat, the more irritated he got by the beeping sound.

  “What is that noise?” he said, getting up. He couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from, but it was really getting on his nerves. “Be quiet!” he said, kicking the wall. Then, to Glen’s surprise, his kick caused something to fall from the ceiling vent. It hit the ground with a thud.

  Hey, what is that? Glen wondered, bending down for a closer look. It was a mechanical instrument, about the size of a brick. A wire stuck out of one end, and an arrow blinked red in time with the beeps that had bothered Glen so much. Picking it up and finding that it was surprisingly heavy, Glen realized what he’d found.

  “It’s the locator device,” he said. Turning around, he noticed that the red arrow turned green. He took a few steps forward, out into the hall, and saw that the frequency of the blinks and beeps had increased. “It must be leading me to Salerno!”

  With his spirits high once again, Glen exited the medical facility and hopped into his rover.

  On Salerno’s Trail

  The rover raced across the moon, following the locator device’s tracking signal. Glen looked down at the device, which he’d placed on the passenger seat, and saw that the green arrow was flashing more and more rapidly.

  I guess I’m headed in the right direction, he thought. As he used his left hand to steer, he used his right to take out the journal and flip to the map. It looks like the signal is leading me to something called the biodome. That must be where Salerno is hiding!

  Glen was happy, knowing that soon enough he’d have Salerno and be allowed to return home. With his foot pressed to the floor, he said, “I’m coming for you, Commander.”

  But then something distracted Glen, and he veered off his path to have a better look. It was another obelisk, identical to the one he’d seen before but with different engravings. Glen fumbled for the notebook and found what he was looking for.

  “Aha!” he said. “Here it is, Number One. This must be the first structure Salerno found.” He was mesmerized by the towering object and burned to know more about it. What did its strange engravings mean, how did it get here, and most importantly, what was it used for?

  “Son, do you copy? I say, do you copy?” It was Slayton’s voice. He’d been barking over Glen’s headset for several minutes, but it was just now that Glen heard him, so fascinated was he by t
he mysterious structure in front of him.

  “Yes, sir, I copy,” Glen said, shaking himself from his daydream.

  “Son, you’re wasting time. Now, quit stalling and get back on track!” ordered Slayton.

  “Yes, sir, I will. But what can you tell me about these stone structures I’m finding out here?” Glen asked.

  “Jeez-a-loo!” Slayton shouted. “Don’t tell me you’re turning into Salerno and getting all mushy-brained over those things.”

  “No, sir, I’m not. I’m just wondering—”

  “Well, stop your wondering,” Slayton said. “I don’t know what those things are, probably just natural rock formations. Truth is, I don’t really care. What I do care about is finding that missing astronaut. Do you copy?”

  “Yes, sir, I copy,” Glen said quietly. He walked back to the rover, feeling torn. He did want to find Salerno and get home, but his curiosity was hard to ignore. Despite what Slayton said, there was no way those structures just happened. Someone or something put them there. But who? And why?

  Glen tried to shake these questions from his head as he drove. The green arrow of the locator device was now beeping wildly, and he saw the biodome up ahead.

  Parking the rover outside, Glen stepped out and entered the building. Unlike the other facilities, which were filled with white corridors and many rooms, the biodome was just one open space. Plants crawled up the enormous glass walls all the way to the domed ceiling, which was also made of glass.

  I think I’ve heard about this place, Glen said to himself. This is where the astronauts grew their food and did experiments on vegetation. He looked around and was astonished at the size of some of the vegetables. There were apples and tomatoes the size of basketballs. That’s amazing, Glen thought. I wonder why their fruits and vegetables grow so big. Maybe it has something to do with the moon’s gravity.